Stop One: Melbourne Part 1

If any of you read my hubby’s blog, he blogged about Melbourne yesterday. I’ll be duplicating a little what he does, but will be looking at our Australian trip a little differently.

Dave and I both take pictures on vacation and we end up with about 2,000 photos – many of them the same. I’ve found that even though we take the same pictures, our focus is often very different. Anyway, here’s my view of Melbourne.

This is a very artsy place. I wish we would have scheduled more than two full days to spend time here. There were so many places we wanted to see, but didn’t have time. But I did see lots of art out and about or what could be made into art in the future.

Melbourne had such a European flavor to us – the streets, the shops – they all reminded me of our stay several years ago in Italy. We stayed in the Prahran district, not far from the Melbourne CBD (Central Business District) via tram #72.

Here is what I saw on our walk to the tram to take us to Queen Victoria Market.

Pastry shop in Praham
Pastry shop in Prahran

The Queen Victoria Market was massive with over 600 vendors. We didn’t take the time to visit all of them, but did see quite a bit. Click on pictures to enlarge.

But besides food there were lots of booths with other stuff including these leggings. Oh, la, la! Oh, now how I wished I would have bought a pair!

Leggings for sale at the Queen Victoria Market
Beautiful leggings!

But all of this looking and shopping made us hungry so we found this at a local deli and sat down to this lunch – a masterpiece!

Lunch at Queen Victoria Market
Lunch at Queen Victoria Market

We also visited the Block Arcade. We didn’t think we’d do much shopping there, but heard the building should not be missed while visiting Melbourne. Oh, my, was it beautiful! We did buy some awesome spices in that spice shop.

We visited the Prahran Market, across the street from our hotel. Lots of good stuff there too.

As I said, art was all around.

Melbourneart1

While we were waiting for our tram to take us back to our hotel.

Art on the side of a tram
Art on the side of a tram

And the building that houses RMIT University across from our tram waiting stop.

melbourneart3

I was going to try to have just one Melbourne post but I think this is long enough for today. The next post is about the Royal Botanical Garden – one of the most beautiful gardens I’ve ever seen. And there was no admission! See you Monday.